Software quality wasn’t great in 2018 and then suddenly declined. Software quality has been as shit as legally possible since the dawn of (programming) time.
The software crisis has never ended. It has only been increasing in severity.
Ever since we have been trying to squeeze more programming performance out of software developers at the cost of performance.
The main issue is the software crisis: Hardware performance follows moore’s law, developer performance is mostly constant.
If the memory of your computer is counted in bytes without a SI-prefix and your CPU has maybe a dozen or two instructions, then it’s possible for a single human being to comprehend everything the computer is doing and to program it very close to optimally.
The same is not possible if your computer has subsystems upon subsystems and even the keyboard controller has more power and complexity than the whole apollo programs combined.
So to program exponentially more complex systems we would need exponentially more software developer budget. But since it’s really hard to scale software developers exponentially, we’ve been trying to use abstraction layers to hide complexity, to share and re-use work (no need for everyone to re-invent the templating engine) and to have clear boundries that allow for better cooperation.
That was the case way before electron already. Compiled languages started the trend, languages like Java or C# deepened it, and using modern middleware and frameworks just increased it.
OOP complains about the chain “React → Electron → Chromium → Docker → Kubernetes → VM → managed DB → API gateways”. But he doesn’t even consider that even if you run “straight on bare metal” there’s a whole stack of abstractions in between your code and the execution. Every major component inside a PC nowadays runs its own separate dedicated OS that neither the end user nor the developer of ordinary software ever sees.
But the main issue always reverts back to the software crisis. If we had infinite developer resources we could write optimal software. But we don’t so we can’t and thus we put in abstraction layers to improve ease of use for the developers, because otherwise we would never ship anything.
If you want to complain, complain to the mangers who don’t allocate enough resources and to the investors who don’t want to dump millions into the development of simple programs. And to the customers who aren’t ok with simple things but who want modern cutting edge everything in their programs.
In the end it’s sadly really the case: Memory and performance gets cheaper in an exponential fashion, while developers are still mere humans and their performance stays largely constant.
So which of these two values SHOULD we optimize for?
The real problem in regards to software quality is not abstraction layers but “business agile” (as in “business doesn’t need to make any long term plans but can cancel or change anything at any time”) and lack of QA budget.
Yeah what I hate that agile way of dealing with things. Business wants prototypes ASAP but if one is actually deemed useful, you have no budget to productisize it which means that if you don’t want to take all the blame for a crappy app, you have to invest heavily in all of the prototypes. Prototypes who are called next gen project, but gets cancelled nine times out of ten 🤷🏻♀️. Make it make sense.
This. Prototypes should never be taken as the basis of a product, that’s why you make them. To make mistakes in a cheap, discardible format, so that you don’t make these mistake when making the actual product. I can’t remember a single time though that this was what actually happened.
They just label the prototype an MVP and suddenly it’s the basis of a new 20 year run time project.
In my current job, they keep switching around everything all the time. Got a new product, super urgent, super high-profile, highest priority, crunch time to get it out in time, and two weeks before launch it gets cancelled without further information. Because we are agile.
The article is very much off point.
The main issue is the software crisis: Hardware performance follows moore’s law, developer performance is mostly constant.
If the memory of your computer is counted in bytes without a SI-prefix and your CPU has maybe a dozen or two instructions, then it’s possible for a single human being to comprehend everything the computer is doing and to program it very close to optimally.
The same is not possible if your computer has subsystems upon subsystems and even the keyboard controller has more power and complexity than the whole apollo programs combined.
So to program exponentially more complex systems we would need exponentially more software developer budget. But since it’s really hard to scale software developers exponentially, we’ve been trying to use abstraction layers to hide complexity, to share and re-use work (no need for everyone to re-invent the templating engine) and to have clear boundries that allow for better cooperation.
That was the case way before electron already. Compiled languages started the trend, languages like Java or C# deepened it, and using modern middleware and frameworks just increased it.
OOP complains about the chain “React → Electron → Chromium → Docker → Kubernetes → VM → managed DB → API gateways”. But he doesn’t even consider that even if you run “straight on bare metal” there’s a whole stack of abstractions in between your code and the execution. Every major component inside a PC nowadays runs its own separate dedicated OS that neither the end user nor the developer of ordinary software ever sees.
But the main issue always reverts back to the software crisis. If we had infinite developer resources we could write optimal software. But we don’t so we can’t and thus we put in abstraction layers to improve ease of use for the developers, because otherwise we would never ship anything.
If you want to complain, complain to the mangers who don’t allocate enough resources and to the investors who don’t want to dump millions into the development of simple programs. And to the customers who aren’t ok with simple things but who want modern cutting edge everything in their programs.
In the end it’s sadly really the case: Memory and performance gets cheaper in an exponential fashion, while developers are still mere humans and their performance stays largely constant.
So which of these two values SHOULD we optimize for?
The real problem in regards to software quality is not abstraction layers but “business agile” (as in “business doesn’t need to make any long term plans but can cancel or change anything at any time”) and lack of QA budget.
Are you crazy? Profit goes to shareholders, not to invest in the project. Get real.
Yeah what I hate that agile way of dealing with things. Business wants prototypes ASAP but if one is actually deemed useful, you have no budget to productisize it which means that if you don’t want to take all the blame for a crappy app, you have to invest heavily in all of the prototypes. Prototypes who are called next gen project, but gets cancelled nine times out of ten 🤷🏻♀️. Make it make sense.
This. Prototypes should never be taken as the basis of a product, that’s why you make them. To make mistakes in a cheap, discardible format, so that you don’t make these mistake when making the actual product. I can’t remember a single time though that this was what actually happened.
They just label the prototype an MVP and suddenly it’s the basis of a new 20 year run time project.
In my current job, they keep switching around everything all the time. Got a new product, super urgent, super high-profile, highest priority, crunch time to get it out in time, and two weeks before launch it gets cancelled without further information. Because we are agile.
MAXIMUM ARMOR
Shit, my GPU is about to melt!